June 12th, 2011

Chris Burnham. Interviewed. By us. Screaming. Nuff said.

But enough about you, Chris. Were you familiar with our site already, or did you google your name?

Heh. I think I got a Google Alert about it, though I may have been directed here by Cameron Stewart. Either way, I’d been to the site before for your MorrisoNotations. I seriously love this Grant Morrison stuff. The other night I was the second or third person in the world to read Batman Incorporated #7. Pretty awesome to still be able to geek out over something that you’ve been slaving over.

How is that, the googling?

My girlfriend set me up with some Google Alerts so I’m no longer distracted by googling myself every half hour when a new issue comes out. Sadly, Twitter has filled that void. That shit is as bad as Bejeweled Blitz. If you told me that all this addictive distraction stuff was an evil Chinese conspiracy to destroy the productivity of the Weak-Willed West I would totally believe you. Internet’s been pretty nice to me, actually. Not nearly as much “poor man’s Quitely” as I was expecting.

A year or so ago, no-one had heard of you (think this was roughly when Officer Downe/Amory Wars started) can you fill us in a bit on the extended background to yr stratospheric rise?

Man, for a stratospheric rise this shit took a long time! I’m 33! I should be raising the dead by now! ;D

Let’s see… a quick blow-by-blow of my career to this point…

In 2002 I moved to Chicago to be the graphic designer for an up & coming theatre company, The House Theatre of Chicago. For six or seven years I designed all their posters, postcards, trading cards, print ads, t-shirts, web sites etc. To promote an upcoming play about a pulpy superhero named Valentine, we put out a 12-page ashcan comic book. In lieu of payment, The House gave me 500 copies to do with as I pleased, and at the Pittsburgh, San Diego, and Chicago shows of 2003 I handed them out to every professional I could find. Every comic gig I’ve ever gotten traces back to this ashcan. I’ve never ever ever gotten a gig from sample pages. That shit is a waste of fucking time, kids. Just go out and make your thing.

Valentine: The Safe Cracker’s Tale

… I just tried typing out a description of every gig and it was taking forever. I write less and less and in the last year or two have utterly lost that ability. Hell, in college I used to write 25 page papers in one night.

I have no idea how I was ever able to do that. Let’s do kind of a cause & effect chart, instead. This would work better as a graphic, but I think this gets the basic idea across. Comicwise, my career’s taken a fairly linear path, and there’s only been a couple forks in the road. The only gigs I’ve gotten that didn’t come directly out of doing something specific were Days Missing, where I’d been buddies with the editor and Amory Wars, which my agent got me. Speaking of Amory, that was a huge game-changer for me. I’d never had to draw a page a day before. It’s an absolute shit ton of work, but without the belief and knowledge that I could do it I’d never have been able to handle Batman.

Also, while one thing leads to another, I hope it’s clear that each of these projects stands on its own merits and shouldn’t just be seen as a stepping stone.

Non comics-wise, I’ve had a bunch of weird jobs. Comics didn’t really pay the bills on a regular basis until just a few years ago, so I had to take whatever non-soul crushing work I could find. I was an assistant animator on cereal commercials, a graphic designer, an animator for the Phoenix Suns and Arizona Diamondbacks Jumbotron races, a beer bottle concept artist, a theatrical designer… all sorts of things. Looking back, it probably would have been easier to just be a waiter. Next life!

You must be aware of the standard fan criticism by now – Quitely gets it too – the thing about how they don’t like the way you draw faces. Does it get to you that so many fans have such a completely narrow view of what comic art should and could be (i.e. Alex Ross)?

Aw, it’s alright. I can relate. As a kid I used to hate Jack Kirby because he wasn’t realistic enough. A few years ago I hated George Perez because his panel borders didn’t line up perfectly. I’m sure right now I’ve got an irrational distaste for something I’ll love in 10 years. If they don’t like my scribbles, there’s a million other books out there for them to enjoy. Hopefully I’ll still be around if and when they warm up to me.

Wait a minute… did you just trick me into comparing myself to Jack Kirby and George Perez? Man, fuck you guys! ;D

Further to that, you seem to be a guy who speaks his mind – do you ever worry you’ll struggle with the level of diplomacy expected from a creator in your position? Can you even answer that…..?

Ha! Boy, have you ever got MY number! I certainly have a big mouth and it’s gotten me in a fair share of trouble. Nothing major, but I’ve created my fair share of uncomfortable moments for myself. You know the expression “If you’re in a hole, stop digging”? Whoever coined that phrase was a goddamn moron. If you’re stuck in a hole and the only tool you’ve got is a shovel the ONLY way to get out is to KEEP digging!

That said, I’m trying to be better about it. I noticed a precipitous drop in Twitter followers when I went on a tear about the Big Bang Theory being Amos & Andy for geeks. And while losing Twitter followers certainly isn’t the end of the world, there’s probably a good chance that they won’t be buying my comics anymore, either. I love Phil Spector’s music so much that he could have killed every woman in California and I’d still listen to his music, but if I would have heard about his crimes first, I don’t think I’d ever have listened to a single song. Hell, I think people that didn’t like Speed Racer shouldn’t be allowed to procreate, much less have their comics purchased, and I’m sure there are people that feel the same way about whatever opinion I’m shouting at any given time.

And while I don’t want to feel like my opinions are being held hostage, I’m just not sure there’s anything to be gained for talking trash, no matter how much I love doing it. I dunno. Mom was probably right with the old “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” I’ve definitely come across a couple guys trashing my Batman art, and I’ve gotta admit it stings. The golden rule applies. If I don’t like some asshole saying I suck, I probably shouldn’t say anyone else sucks. (except for that asshole. Fair game on that fucking prick)

BUT, since I’m literally thinking about comics and how to make them all day long, sometimes I’ll read something so egregiously WRONG that I feel a deep compulsion to yell about it… the truth MUST be told! Maybe these letterers don’t know how shitty they are at perspective! Maybe these artists don’t realize that photo backgrounds look like shit! Maybe these editors don’t realize that filling up the first page of a superhero comic with horribly designed rambling text summaries should earn them atomic wedgies so powerful their children won’t be able to shit right. Heh.

I’m on a couple of pro-only message boards where the guys can blow off steam about whichever popular piece of shit is pissing us off at any given time. Pretty therapeutic. The negative comments go into the private message boards, positive ones go on Twitter.

You’ve been described in one or two places as being a very ‘post-Quitely’ artist. Is that a label you accept, do you think FQ has wrung a significant change to the way comics are drawn?

Well there’s no doubt that Quitely is a big influence on my art. As far as “post-Quitely” goes, I don’t think I’m there yet. If people’s first thought when they look at my art is “Huh. Looks kinda like Frank Quitely” then I haven’t fully absorbed it and made it my own.

Officer Downe

I see a lot more page-width panels in comics these days, but that’s probably as much due to Warren Ellis as it is to Quitely and Cassaday. There’s a couple other guys out there using similar styles to me, my Ten Ton Studio-mates Aaron Kuder and Nick Pitarra come to mind, and that Raphael Grampa guy is a great Quitely / Paul Pope mashup at the moment. Huh… I wonder if he keeps drawing the same way if we’ll just stop referring to the Quitely thing and let him stand on his own merits. Is the artist the one that has to assimilate or is it the reader? Huh. I dunno.

Did that make ANY sense?

There’s an, errr, *illustrative* quality to your style – do you think it’s important for comic art to experiment and branch out in different directions?

Hmm… I’m not sure I agree, or maybe I don’t quite understand what you mean by “illustrative.” To me, illustrations are meant to stand on their own, whereas each of my panels are designed with the surrounding panels in mind. But, to answer the second part, yes it’s important for artists (or me, at least) to keep experimenting, if only to stay engaged. Most of my favorite panels were ones where I was trying something new. One thing that comes to mind with my own art is that for the last few issues I’ve been actively choosing simpler perspectives… not to save time but for ease of reading. I love drawings with crazy perspective, but for the average panel it’s not necessary and can actually be distracting. I’m currently doing a lot more 1 and 2 point perspective and trying to keep the horizon line at the eye-height of the person in the panel that I most want the reader to identify with.

Batman Inc #4

On issue 4 of Inc, however, I was enamored with these “super tangents” where I would draw these angled panels and have the perspective of the rooms IN the panels be in allignment with the panels themselves. Along with that I was doing a lot of shared vanishing points, where the secondary vanishing points of one panel would be the primary vanishing point in another… not sure if it was adding anything to the reading experience, but it definitely kept me engaged as an artist. There’s only so many ways to draw an over-the-shoulder shot of someone looking at a computer screen, so I like to try and come up with different ideas to keep myself fresh.

We’ll see!

So who – and what – are your biggest influences?

At the moment, the Quitely thing is still in the forefront. Just the other night I drew a great face that I was really proud of for a second before I realized it was totally a Quitely face. Goddamnit. (sidebar – I watched Zombieland the other night, and from certain angles Woody Harrelson looks exactly like Quitely’s Superman). When I drew the first Elephantmen story I was doing a Moebius / Ladronn sort of thing with some Caniff thrown in. Quitely’s clearly got a strong Moebius influence to his art, so when I started looking more at Quitely it got sucked in pretty quickly. Artistic capillary action or something.

The Black Hat & Golem from Popgun vol. 3

As you’ll see in Batman Inc #7, Tetsuo Hara (the Fist of the North Star guy) is starting to have a bigger influence on my art these days, and I see Doug Mahnke and Art Adams shining through once in a while. On a deeper level there’s a lot of Jack Kirby, Walt Simonson & Erik Larsen in there.

There’s a solid bedrock of John Buscema via How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way. A fair amount of Jim Starlin. And to be honest there’s a lot of McFarlane, Liefeld, Sam Kieth and the rest of the Image gang in there. A few years ago I was reading McFarlane’s Spider-Man #6, and I realized that every cloaked figure I’ve drawn for the past 20 years was based on his Hobgoblin. Weird.

There’s a million other artists I’m forgetting to mention. I love MC Escher’s creativity. Frank Lloyd Wright, Piet Mondrian & Mignola strongly influenced how I used to do my panel compositions, but they’re not as appropriate for the way Morrison’s scripts read.

I like the way Katsuhiro Otomo will zoom in to a little action to make the surrounding actions more impressive. BIG BIGGER little BIGGEST works really well.

I dunno. There’s a million. Every time I watch or read something I’ll spot something I want to emulate or avoid. Hopefully I’ll keep finding new stuff to like rather than stewing in the same influences for the rest of my career.

Are you now the main artist on Batman Inc or sort of swapping arcs/intermittent fills for one another with Paquette?

Time and Spaghetti Monster-willing, I’ll be drawing all of Batman:Leviathan (or whatever Batman Inc season 2 ends up being called)

How do you see the current bat-tonality? What do you add to it? You certainly don’t seem to be from the grrrty camp – too much love for those psychedelic scenes….

Chris Sims writes a lot about how Batman works really well across so many styles and genres. He’s as awesome big & campy as he is dark & mysterious, and Grant is showing that they’re all side of the same character.

Accordingly, I try and shift my art to an appropriate degree to match whatever’s going on in the scene. If it’s lovey-dovey, I’ll try and be a little more delicate. If someone’s head is getting ripped off I’ll go a little grittier. I don’t have the ability or inclination to do what JH Williams does and completely change his style on a page-by-page basis, but consciously or unconsciously my style adapts to the problem at hand.

How much are you adding? Was Elly in the script? The giant penny? The moebius-y guy in issue four? I only ask because you seem like an artist, like Fairbairn (get over here and let us interview you, Fairbairn!), who really wants to bring something to the party. Engaged.

My favorite way to work is Marvel style, where the writer gives me a plot with rough page breakdowns (ie 3 pages of this conversation, 2 pages of this fight), I draw the thing how I see fit, and the writer goes in and scripts based on that. Nixon’s Pals and Marvel Mystery (and to a lesser degree, Officer Downe) were done like that, so I’m pretty comfortable with adding things in. Although Grant leaves much of the dialog unwritten, he’s fairly specific in his panel descriptions. Most of the little things are Grant’s. He’s not Alan Moore or anything, but when he’s describing a new character or setting he’ll give a couple paragraphs of description.

Marvel Mystery Comics 70th Anniversary Special #1

Lessee… some examples of stuff I added…

In B & R 16, the only major thing I added was making the dominos be 8-1-8-1-8-1-8-1… HAHAHAHA.

The Moebius guy in issue 4 was Grant’s idea. If you look real close, you’ll see that he actually has the Ourobouros symbol on his chest. Is he just a figment of the drug trip or could there be something more to this…?

Oh yeah…

As far as the Wayne building goes, Grant just asked for a slick, corporate lobby with a bunch of sculptures & plants, but then went on to describe one of the paintings from the Lichtenstein-esque exhibit from the beginning of Batman & Son. (sidebar: FUCK Roy Lichtenstein) That idea made me think of the Wayne building lobby as being the Brucecave, complete with props from his various corporate adventures. The Batcave is made of stone, the Brucecave is made of glass… it’s even got a crystal stalactites! Just as Grant’s Batman run has been combining various interpretations of Batman into a whole, he’s also more seamlessly combining Bruce Wayne and Batman into one person with a really weird wardrobe closet. Bruce is as powerful and imposing a figure as Batman. Hell, if you flip to the scene in the Batbunker, even with his cowl off, Bruce is still Batmannier than Dick is.

Bruce Cave!

The giant quarter was my idea. Elly was Grant’s. It’s amazing how with just three little one-page appearances he has created an entire character arc for her in the reader’s minds. Amazing. Related to that, I love how he introduces and resolves an entire conspiracy against Commissioner Gordon in one page in that junkyard scene. Amazing. I added the little panel of Gordon looking down at the Bat-badge, less to give him a little character moment then to zoom in on Gordon to give the Bat-team a chance to disappear off-panel.

What else… Damian spitting out the coffee in issue 7 was me. Grant wanted Alfred to have SOME presence in the scene but didn’t think he should have any lines. So I made him exit the room via the ladder having just delivered some coffee to the boys. I liked the scene earlier in the run where Dick likes the sandwich and Damian doesn’t, so I recreated it here. Grant asked for any old message board – I went in and made it look just like the CBR boards for fun.

Regarding the message board avatars, Grant asked for the closeup of the lady’s tummy, the other icons were mine. In almost every comic I’ve drawn over the past 2 or 3 years I’ll include these goofy little Russian Nesting Gleeps on someone’s mantel or bookshelf. I couldn’t find a place for them in this issue so I just straight up drew Gloop and Gleep (from the Herculoids) here.

Heh. On the Nightrunner running on the car page, no one seems to have noticed the totally stereotypical Frenchman with the striped shirt, moustache and beret I put in the red car.

Oh! To toot my own horn a little here, on panel 5 of the Black Bat page, Grant’s script just had the cloud of heroin being dumped out of the helicopter. To give the reader a chance of understanding what that cloud was without reading the dialogue, I went in and drew a gazillion bricks of heroin in panels 3 and 4.

Although I typically don’t find Grant’s comics as confusing as a lot of readers do, I’m really trying to go above and beyond in order to make them as easy to follow as I can. One thing I did in this issue as much as possible was put scene and time transitions on separate tiers to help the reader immediately realize that even though we’re still on the same page, we’re now in a different time or location. This obviously necessitated me doing a lot of Quitely-esque page-wide panels, whereas I typically prefer to do a lot of weird panel stacking.

The big double page spread was Grant’s idea. I spent an entire day thumbnailing this thing in a gazillion different ways. It was all pretty specifically spelled out by Grant. I think the only thing I added was moving the Batman Japan bit from panel 7 to panel 6 and adding shoji doors and tatami mats to the background to try & sell the Japanity of it.

So…. long story short, it’s mostly Grant.

Time for you to ruin my fan-wank time. Are those really storage tubes for bat costumes in the Wayne Tower lobby?

If they were bat-costumes they’d have little bat ears/horns. They’re supposed to be suits of armor like Wayne has in Batman (1989). But they can be whatever you want, I guess.

Have you actually, you know, met that Grant Morrison bloke yet? We all know he’s a bit rubbish with the artists, but you’re a guy we think he should keep sweet….

I exchange emails with his wife Kristan, and he talks to me in the scripts, but that’s about it.

What other comics do you read, you don’t seem like a standard superhero fanboy?

Well, I actually love me some superhero stuff. I’m as continuity-obsessed as anyone, and I’m diving through the back issue bins with the rest of the punters every Wednesday and at every convention (did I use “punters” properly?) I guess my proportion of superhero books has decreased in the last couple of years, but every couple of months I’ll get re-obsessed with a character or storyline and be right back in it.

And the fact Burnham’s going to be the main artist on Batman Inc: Leviathan (or whatever the name will be) is good news indeed. His art’s properly inspiring stuff to me, and while I can see a Quietly influence, it’s by no means all there is to his work. It’s going to fun watching him develop as an artist, so it is.

Top work, guys. Burnham comes across as a very intelligent and decent chap, as well as really talented. I love reading artists talk about their process, and he has a real gift for explaining his technique and decision. A real gift of an interview.

No, but seriously … fuck Roy Lichtenstein. I’ve had professorial artists give me right dirty looks when I tell them my plans in post are drawing comics, like that’s some lesser form of art. The same goons will sing the praises of Lichtenstein during “pop art projects” when all he did was shark Kirby. The shittiest thing is that I enjoy looking at the work, purely aesthetically it’s nice to see big five-color Silver Age paintings amidst screen-prints of tyrants, pop stars and electric chairs.

I can’t wait to see what Burnham can do over the course of twelve whole issues, all to himself. I expect some set of panels in issue # 12 to reference something from issue # 1, and I hotly anticipate scavenger hunts.

Great interview boys! More of these things, eh? Maybe one with Mrs. Morrison?

Chris Burnham, that double page spread where Kathy breaks up with Bruce very well may be the best and most succinct page of Batman art not drawn by Miller or Mazzuchelli. Hyped for Leviathinc, and congrats on the exclusive. I hope they use you wisely.

I’d like to add my voice to the not anti-lichtenstein camp. Yes, it’s crap that no one other than him saw any real money or recognition from his work, but there’s definitely an anti-art element to the comics internet’s hatred of the guy, an almost wilful ignorance of the fact that the meaning of an image can vary depending on context. Sorry, can’t get with that.

i don’t know if it’s so much an anti-art sentiment as much as it is the fact that a man cutting images out of context, blowing them up on to a (museum) wall, is a household name while jack kirby remains a name familiar only to people ‘into’ comics. I was at the Otolith show at the MACBA recently, and they had incorporated some of Kirby’s design work for the Lord of Light theme park into their exhibit. Needless to say it functioned beautifully, and on a multitude of levels, and the craft and ideation behind the works was plain out BETTER than anything i’ve ever seen of liechtenstein’s.

I think a lot of it is a sensitivity towards an implied disposability to comics art by the ‘art’ world. “Why is this guy in every big museum and making so much money while my guy had to fight for the rights of characters he created until the day he died?” kinda thing.

Most ‘real artists’ that I’ve spoken to tend to point to the sequentiality of comics, their enforced and often times constraining context, as being the reason they don’t take the form seriously, which plays with Amy’s comment about the willful ignorance of the comics internet rather nicely. Art in service of story is less art than art for it’s own sake?

I find Lichtenstein’s stuff tremendously displeasing on an aesthetic level. Plain and simply put I think his translation of comics linework and four-color treatments to be clumsy and often pretty ugly.

And whilst I’ll happily admit that there are large chunks of the ‘comics internet’ that are possibly ‘anti-art’, there are also a hell of a lot of people who treat the artform in a scholarly and respectful manner. And the fact is that there are some astonishing artists and a whole visual language that 99.9% of the world know nothing about. Lichtenstein’s someone who had a bright idea and executed it in a frankly cack-handed manner. There’s more genuine pop artistry in 1950′s commercial illustration, animation, advertising and, yes, comics than in Lichtenstein’s work. And that could well be what rankles about his ascension to the ranks of respectability.

I’m surprised at the level of feeling this topic has teased to the surface. I feel sort of left out – like I’ve failed to meet the comics enthusiast entry criteria or something.

I wonder if there’s a case to be made for Lichtenstein adding significantly, even helping to kickstart, the notion of comics as art, though. I’m woefully ignorant of art history, and even more ignorant of the history of the comic book’s battle to taken seriously by the art establishment, so I simply have no idea.

It’s worth bearing in mind that without Lichtenstein and Warhol, there probably wouldn’t have been a 1960s Batman TV show, and without the 1960s Batman TV show, the Batman comic book would probably have folded, and Batman would probably be a historical character now rather than an ongoing franchise.

Hrrrmmmm… The “point” of Pop Art is that it makes no point, no larger aeshetic or social statement. It’s just an out of context artistic representation of the natural world it grew out of. Now my bearded rebellious hippie youthful version of myself wrote my Art History III final paper arguing that Pop Art is the ULTIMATE social statement: man divorced from nature, confusing manufactured product with an un-man made natural world, yadda yadda yadda… But I’ve come around a bit in my thinking and changed my opinion since then.

I see Pop Art as a precursor to the re-mixed and re-mastered mash-up culture we seem to be moving towards more and more everyday. I’m not walking out my door and soaking up some grand, breathtaking scenic vistas… I’m being bombarded with manufactured product on a far more frequent basis. This is the world I live in.

That’s the Pop Artist. Here is my environment. I’m just processing it and regurgitating it back to you through the lens of my own mind and ability.

Hell, at least Lichtenstein probably produced a hell of a lot more of the artwork his name was signed to than Warhol did. But I don’t devalue either any more or less… they both grew out of the same artistic movement. Same basic notion behind the impetus to create something.

We can’t hold an artist responsible for how the audience percieves or elevates their work. What makes Keith Haring any more legitimate than your anonymous graffitti artist? Nothing in MY opinion. The fine art world is full of self delusionals pricks who are almost always late to the party when it comes to the new and inspired. I don’t need anyone else to approve or validate an artists work for me to enjoy it. I have School of Athens hanging on my wall next to a WPA poster, my eight year old cousins’ plaid patterned finger painting and my girlfriend’s Yeowell inspired Ragged Robin (with Rian Hughes pop art grenade and Invisibles Logo worked in to boot.) I personally value the human drive/inspiration/need to create. That’s what art is about to me. Sure we can argue over skill inherent in a piece and yes, there are surely different levels of skillful execution out there, but it’s the drive to experiment, to do something new, something different… something pure and personally inspired that draws me to the table.

Lichtenstein was pulling that panel of Kirby art out of context and saying his subject matter was just as legitimate as any other out there. It exists in my external world and is fair game to be interpreted through my eyes, mind and brush.

Okay, all fair points. I have zero interest in the art that I love being validated by a perceived respectable critical elite, don’t get me wrong. BUT. I think Lichtenstein’s stuff is essentially a lifeless distillation of an art-form done with a lot less skill than hundreds of the artists who slogged away in obscurity. I’m not holding him responsible – as I said he came up with a neat idea and coined it in. Nonetheless the fact that his stuff became so synonymous with comics, when it’s so…fucking ugly, is tiresome.

I feel like if I painted a 10×10 canvas with what amounted to a copy of a panel from a Quitely comic, it’d be as relevant as Lichtenstein. I know from the people I’m surrounded with a constant basis that more than half of success in the art community is time and place.

At some point in the 60′s, comics evolved. It was definitely time & place related, and I can even admit it was guys like Lichtenstein who were savvy enough to recognize it and try to profit from it.

There’s inherent skill to that. It took a decade and a half of slaving away in industrial and graphic art for Warhol to stumble into the right time & place (and I’d argue his old commercial stuff is a lot better looking). Then again, he knew how to sell himself, too. (Still working on that bit, myself … I’ll be sellout and proud one of these days.)

It’s the lack of imagination that kills me. S’why I vowed to slay Damian Hirst some day if I ever should see him. Maybe I’m just like Bruce. All this comic book stuff is way too highbrow for me.

I’ve got a fantastic journal full of art history notes. I don’t think a page goes by where I don’t link something historically to DC Comics … or more often than not, Grant’s Batman run. From Hierarchy of Scale on Grant’s New Gods to whatever else have you. Sounds like my next blogspot is writing itself, actually.

Litchenscamer copied and belittled real artist like Kirby. Any Kirby panel is full of authentic cosmic thought.Long live Kirby. Also great interview, Burnham is making my life more wonderful than I imagined.

On a final Liechten-note on my end, the works of his that I find most effective are his abstracted reliefs, where he takes a comic book effect and pulls it out of the page into the third dimension, in incredible four color. There’s something surreal and fantastical about walking through a museum and seeing a big ol’ Sgt. Rock explosion silently shake the foundations of our reality.

I’m not making any claims for Lichtenstein’s talent, value, ethics or originality, except that it was people like him, Warhol, Mel Ramos, Richard Pettibone and Jess Collins who made comic book art fashionable to a broader market in the 1960s, and without the gallery Pop Artists ripping off the work of largely unrecognised and unappreciated comic book artists and bringing it to the public eye, comics wouldn’t have become ironically trendy and Batman the TV show would not have been made, and we would not be reading Batman Inc today. I agree entirely that Lichtenstein’s work is boring and based on other people’s ideas, but Pop Art was a much-needed energy shot in the arm for superheroes.

[...] Creators | Batman Incorporated artist Chris Burnham chats about his career, fan criticism, artistic style, influences, and working with Grant Morrison: “Although Grant leaves much of the dialog unwritten, he’s fairly specific in his panel descriptions. Most of the little things are Grant’s. He’s not Alan Moore or anything, but when he’s describing a new character or setting he’ll give a couple paragraphs of description.” [Mindless Ones] [...]

Will, Raymond Pettibon was 12 at the end of the sixties. I’m anti-Lichtenstein, for the most part, But I think its a shame that this argument always becomes Warhol vs Lichtenstein, when there are people like Peter Blake, Claes Oldenberg, Richard Hamilton, and most of all Phillip Rosenquist, who were in many cases, more interesting than Pop Art’s 2 “big guns”. All that aside, Chirs Burnham is a great artist, and a heckuva nice guy.

[...] conceit, and maybe that would have been enough if it’d been drawn by JG Jones circa Marvel Boy/Chris Burnham circa Batman Incorporated #7, but with Rag Morales on art I just haven’t been feeling the beats [...]

[...] on the writer’s ideas. In the superb Batman Incorporated #6, it was Burnham who came up with the idea of turning the Wayne Enterprises lobby into a “pseudo-Batcave”, including a gia… It genuinely seems like a collaborative process: He gives me all sorts of rope to hang myself with. [...]

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